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  • Writer's picturePodcast

Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity: The Life of Noel Ignatiev with Jarrod Shanahan



We explore the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev through conversation with Jarrod Shanahan, a life-long comrade of Noel's and co-editor along with Noel Ignatiev on the journal Hard Crackers.


Noel Ignatiev passed on November 9, 2019 at the age of 78. He was a dedicated antiracist leftist who edited the journals Race Traitor and Hard Crackers and wrote the widely influential book How The Irish Became White. The enduring legacy of Noel Ignatiev's life and thought may best be summed up by the slogan printed on the cover of Race Traitor: "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity."


We discuss with Jarrod Shanahan Noel's theoretical contributions to analyses on whiteness and "white skin privilege" as well as his ideas on how small groups of radicals can change society through instigating "creative provocation," such as practiced by the Abolitionists against chattel slavery in the United States.


Jarrod Shanahan is an activist, educator, and researcher. His writing, which has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, Commune, Vice, and The New Inquiry, can be found at jarrodshanahan.com.


Read Jarrod's full article commemorating the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev at Commune Mag: communemag.com/noel-ignatiev-1940-2019/


Further links: Opening Space for the Radical Imagination III www.imaginativespaces.org


Noel Ignatiev Works Referenced:

Black Worker, White Worker http://www.sojournertruth.net/bwww.html




Hard Crackers hardcrackers.com/


CUNY Struggle cunystruggle.org/


$7K or Strike 7korstrike.org/



CLR James and Johnson-Forest tendency For a good introduction into this strain of socialist thought, see The Invading Socialist Society by CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1947/invading/index.htm



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